The NVO experience is probably why the Mods are being more careful with yourselves and will be with other new projects, and I’m sure you’ll understand why having just been burned.
I wouldn’t worry too much about where your topic is, as you’re getting plenty of visibility on the forum.
Really? How come they didn’t act after Safex to protect the community despite warnings since all that time ago then? It was the community members interrogating that got to the bottom of this, not the mods.
Decentralisation ftw! Collectively we are smarter and stronger than the sum of any of our parts 
Yes, really.
That’s pretty rich coming from you. I think you would have been one of the first to accuse us of abuse of power and censorship.
As it should be. We’re not your caretakers. We simply try to keep the forum running smoothly and to make sure the discussions stay on topic. This is al voluntary and some of us are putting a lot of time into this.
In the end everyone that’s looking to invest in to something has to do their own due diligence. Everyone that invested in the NVO proposition did so voluntarily and hopefully only after researching it for an extensive amount of time.
Well of course I will continue to do this for as long as you abuse your power and censor. Excuse me though, how would making whatever changes you intend to make to protect the community now back then lead to such claims? In what way would you be abusing power and censoring?
I only make such accusations for things such as mods promoting projects they are associated with and banning critical voices during crowdsales - this is abuse of power and conflict of interest etc.
Yes and this relies on information and listening to critical voices among all the promoting in order to make an informed decision.
It may have just coincided with NVO, but in essence, yes:
Yes, and the mods played their part as community members as well.
Mods do have a specific role that can affect the visibility different projects get, e.g. by deciding which category their threads are in. Hence the ground rules to make sure anything that gets good visibility is relevant and has some substance.
There is also the “conflict of interest” line that nobody talks about here. @moderators need to have some policy on who gets to participate as a moderator if you’re going to allow ICO pumps.
Imo there needs to be a ban on ICO pumping in this forum until beta.
And full disclosure by anyone pumping an ICO about relationships with MaidSafe Developers or any part of the MaidSafe team.
There is still a bad smell around this NVO scam.
This is mod-talk so I let it to another mod to move this to Meta as it’s going off-topic from NVO. But my 2 cents:
- The moderators/admins of this forum can only support projects on an individual basis. If any of the moderators/admins have a role related to the project (advisor, developer or other) this should be made clear in the OP of the topic.
I guess we can’t be more clear than that. If you want to add different rules and/or different guidelines feel free to create a topic in Meta to share your concerns and come up with different/extra guidelines or a different way of doing things. We are always open to new ideas. Modding a forum isn’t something that can satisfy 100% of all users. We do our best to satisfy as much % as we can.
I don’t think we lose much by not having these ICO threads. There are plenty of sites that tell you which are upcoming, or you can head (briefly) to BCT.
Imo, You should have to have an official partnership or relationship of some kind with Maidsafe to be able to push your ICO here.
Stick that up your meta 
Where are the conflict of interest guidelines? Any at all?
Explain to me where the conflict is then. Or give me an example of how “mod tools” could be abused to support an ICO. Mods always need to reach consensus on any action they take. That’s why @ moderators is always added when someone gets a PM. So even when an evil mod would remove critics on a certain project, there are 7 other mods/admins active on this forum as well. Do you think 1 would come away with pumping some project?? Don’t you think it would cause a number of Flags from the community?
I asked the question. There is no conflict of interest guidelines from what you tell me. If you’re suggesting that mods can’t, or unlikely they will, collude, I agree. But that is not a reason to not have conflict of interest guidelines.
Edit: further to the full disclosure of anyone pumping an ICO that has a relationship with any MaidSafe insiders. This is also part of conflict of interest guidelines not evident. It’s not only mods.
Were any MaidSafe insiders involved with NVO?
No, not as far as I’m aware.
I am unaware of any. And if no moderation was of benefit to NVO then would it really matter. I did not see any and I did not see support from any moderator as a moderator (or at all).
Remember we don’t have magically powers to help any ICO along. So apart from hiding posts that people flag which go against the guidelines I am unsure we can do any more than other members in the forum. There are now some guidelines to help determine what category a ICO will go into now, which NVO predated. If people disagree with any decision then they are free to contact the moderators and/or make it known in Meta
The guidelines I’m referring to are not specific to mods. I saw no moderating issues with NVO. I asked about MaidSafe insiders associated with NVO, even outside the thread. Support for an ICO by a mod in any capacity, without being active on a thread is possible. But there are no guidelines suggesting that is a conflict. And there should be.
Take a minute and think about it.
I did and I said a lot more than answer you
In the guidelines drawn up recently it states:
What does this mean?
What it says, on their own behalf. As a person and not as a moderator.
To also answer further you added
This can easily and often would happen without knowledge of others, so asking us is unlikely to uncover anything, because we most likely would not know and if we did we’d most likely say something. Thus its unlikely we would be told. Also the Mods have no knowledge of what happens in the Maidsafe company and only employees might know. We usually only find things out at the same time everyone else in the community does, and no special information for anyone including the Mods. Obviously something specific for a person is only going to be between them and Maidsafe. I am talking of what should be public.
Get the point this is all might be something bad happening without any actual indication that something did happen from Maidsafe or the mods. Its not fair to often (now and previously by others) be asked if a part of the community (mods and Maidsafe staff) are being dishonest in their dealings when there is no indication at all.
On that note I am off to sleep, hope the conversation goes well and I’ve helped to clear things up for you @BIGbtc (from me anyhow)